


a thousand miles down to the sea

by plinys



Series: Skimmons Week 2014 [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, Panic Attacks, Skimmons Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 22:23:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2245509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to pretend that she’s somewhere else, anywhere else, but it doesn’t work because even when she does so, there’s still the reminder of where she is sharp and sudden and completely unwelcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a thousand miles down to the sea

**Author's Note:**

> For day two, theme: Nightmares.
> 
> (sorry this one is so short, nightmare was actually a really hard prompt to work with, at least for me!)

The water is cold as it presses up against her.

There’s panic bubbling up in her lungs and the back of her throat.

She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to pretend that she’s somewhere else, anywhere else, but it doesn’t work because even when she does so, there’s still the reminder of where she is sharp and sudden and completely unwelcome.

“Just breathe,” the voice beside her says, steady and unwavering, even though she can tell that she’s worried as well, “it’s going to be okay, you just have to breathe.”

Except the mention of that only makes it worse, because she remembers the last time she was submerged, in a pod with their air supply slowly running out and then in the water with the surface too dark and fair away for her to reach, and her lungs too bruised and battered to even remember what breathing felt like.

A part of her wants to cry, wants to give up, and call the whole thing off.

She almost does it, opens her mouth and admits that she’s not strong enough, that this reminds her too much of the dreams that she likes to pretend she doesn’t have, the nightmares that wake her up with cold sweats every night until she gives up trying to sleep at all.

“I can’t-“ she starts to say, the word forming on the edge of her lips, before she manages to finally take a ragged breath.

It doesn’t feel much like success.

But it’s something.

“There we go,” her anchor says again, fingers reaching out to lace through her own, a soft squeeze to her nearly numb appendages, helps to keep her in the present rather than floating away back to the horrors of her past.

Her feet can easily touch the ground, toes curling up against the cement ground of the pool, this should be enough of a reminder that she’s not drowning.

The rational scientific part of her brain knows this, surely it does.

However, the part of her that still feels trapped cannot seem to accept this fact, she imagines foolishly that any second now she will slip beneath the surface and her lungs will cease to function.

She’s never hated her imagination so much as she does in that moment.

“Tell me I’m fine,” she says finally, voice shaking because she needs some reassurance that she’s alright, she needs reassurance that the monsters lurking in the back of her mind whispering their nightmarish thoughts to her are not real.

“You’re doing great,” the reply that comes is nearly instantaneous, “and even if you weren’t, I’m right here with you, if anything happens I’ve got you.”

There’s comfort in those words, in the arms that lace around her shoulders, holding her up even when her knees feel weak and her whole body quakes with sudden onset shivers.

She melts into the comfort of the person beside her, the trust and faith she has in the woman standing next to her is not something that she has ever given so freely before.

“We can get out of the water if you’d like,” comes a steady reassurance, one that rationally she knows if true, she knows that if she opens her eyes she’ll see the stairs out of the pool only about a foot away.

“That might be,” _a good idea_ , is the sentence that she wants to finish.

Somehow without even having to say the words, she understands, and the arms which had been holding her tight slowly move away, their fingers find each other filling in the gaps between them, and blindly she allows herself to be led from the water.

The first breath she takes, when the water has retreated to being just around her ankles, feels like fire coursing through her. She had been holding this off too long, so it burns her airways, something she had needed so desperately for far too long.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” comes her soft gentle reassurance, and slowly she opens her eyes, looking at the worried and beautiful face of her companion, the one person that was able to keep her grounded throughout this whole mess.

“Thank you,” she says, because what else is there to say, how can she explain that without her she never could have done this. “I’m sorry, I’m such a mess,” she says, because maybe that is some sort of an explanation.

“Jems, you’re not a mess.”

“I’m a little bit of a mess,” she objects on principal, because normally people didn’t have panic attacks in pools.

“Maybe a hot mess, but-“

“Skye!”

“What? I’m telling the truth!”

And somehow, that’s just what she needed, because a second later it’s not panic that is overtaking her, but relief and joy. She’s laughing like it’s any other day, like everything is alright and there’s nothing bad in the world.

“How is it that you always know what I need to hear,” she says between bursts of light laughter, that color her cheeks with happiness rather than pale them in fear.

“I’m your girlfriend,” is the only reply she gets, “it’s sort of my job to know these things.”

 

 


End file.
